


Twenty Questions

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Pulp Fiction (1994)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-07
Updated: 2005-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by lassiter</p><p>Post-movie.  Marcellus hits the bottle.  Mia's response: whatever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Questions

**Author's Note:**

> Written for CadetDru

 

 

Marcellus drinks but he isn't a drinker, and there's an important difference. Do you own booze or does the booze own you? Marcellus owns booze, lots of it, high-quality imports that taste as exquisite as their bottles look, but he doesn't pound the stuff like some men Mia knows. Marcellus likes control. Of course he does; you don't get to be a key figure in the LA underworld by cozying up to disarray.

"This is our third bottle this week," says Mia. They're luxuriating in the second-floor jacuzzi, she on one side and he on the other like points on opposite ends of a diameter. There's an expensive blue bottle of something standing among the shampoos and soaps, a peacock hiding in a henhouse. It's half-empty.

Marcellus says, "What?"

"I've just never seen you drink this much, that's all. I almost expect you to start hiccupping with little bubbles coming out of your mouth."

"Mia," says Marcellus, and Mia recognizes his tone. He uses it on the phone with incompetent subordinates. It's a cold and even tone, like funereal earth, signifying the advent of your lost pride. The questions are rhetorical, the answers are inevitable, and all you can do is sit like a good girl while Marcellus saws your legs off at the knees.

Mia replies, "What."

"By the way, humor me and call me `sir', would you?"

Mia frowns. She's used to Marcellus's mind games, but she's not used to being put in her place. She is Marcellus's wife, after all, and it affords her the luxury of doing certain things without getting her head blown off. Right now she plants to use that to her advantage.

"What... _sir_."

"What is on the sink."

She raises an eyebrow. "My toothpaste?"

"Beside your toothpaste, honey. It's made of metal and it makes some loud fucking noise."

"Your gun."

"Bingo. Why is there a gun on the sink?"

"Because you put it there."

"Why did I put it there?"

 _To shoot me. To shoot yourself before the booze can claim you. To find an absurdly creative way to start a game of Twenty Questions._ "Because it was in your pants, which are now on the floor, because it's not common practice in the state of California to bathe whilst clothed."

"Sugar's got a brain in her," says Marcellus. "I knew I married you for something."

"Aww, shucks. Here I was thinking it was because no one else would suck your cock."

Marcellus throws his glass and it shatters against the opposite wall. Mia screams. He stands in the tub, sloshing water over the edge, casting a shadow large enough to engulf her. He _towers_. Before she can say his name or cuss or tell him to stop, Marcellus grabs the side of her neck and continues the interrogation: "So why do I walk around with a gun in my pants?"

"Mar..."

He shakes her. "Why, Mia? I go to business meetings with two palookas whose composite IQ don't even reach the double digits, and a gun in my pants. Why would I do that, when other hard-working businessmen attend meetings with only their briefcase and favorite power tie?"

"Because," says Mia, and she's choking, not from lack of air, not from a crushed windpipe, but from surprise and a growing fear. "You... beca--"

"Your usual talent for repartee seems to have temporarily left, so allow me to enlighten you. The reason there's a gun in my pants because half of LA wants to be me, and the other half wants me dead. There's a gun in my pants because of what I do and what I am, which include various methods of lying, cheating, thieving, and killing."

Her arms are tense, braced against the bathtub edge and holding her weight to minimize chances of accidental strangulation. Marcellus's eyes are wide in his head, wide as hers.

"But I get paid well, having to walk around with a gun in your pants," says Marcellus. "I get paid well for being a target, for being the king everyone wants to see toppled. I took that money - _my_ money - and I bought me some booze to take the edge off things. We may be married but I can still tell you to fuck yourself - hell, I can do a hell of a lot fucking more - for giving me shit about drinking _my_ booze, in _my_ house, with _my_ wife."

Marcellus let her go and she collapsed back into the water, sloshing more water onto the floor. Mia hears the tinkling of broken glass moved around. Her husband sits back in the tub, and Mia does her best to be angry instead of scared and discombobulated.

"I married you because you're smart and I'm smart, because you have class and so do I," says Marcellus, back to the even tone. "But if you got into this arrangement because of my penis, well, here it is right in front of you. I invite you with open arms and open legs to suck it."

Mia inhales, exhales, large inhale, large exhale, locks stares with Marcellus in a battle of who could care less. She gets out, wraps a towel around her, and picks her way through puddles of broken glass. Even as she slams the bathroom door behind her, she's still not sure who won.

+

Some job went wrong. Mia's sure of that. That's what's making Marcellus act so strange. She knows it's not her because she hasn't been doing anything different, so it _must_ be his job. That's all there is to Marcellus, as far as Mia's concerned: being an underworld crime boss, and being her husband.

She doesn't ask the whats and hows and whys. Marcellus doesn't like her to be involved in any way in anything, and Mia's not complaining. There are better things to do than washing blood off your hands all the time. Marcellus seems to be washing his hands big time, and Mia shows concern her own way, by giving him more massages, more head, by playing Miles Davis whenever he's in the house instead of her favored Urge Overkill. She takes his increased alcohol consumption as permission to increase her consumption as well.

That guy Vincent must have been involved. She asked Marcellus, not thinking it was work-related anyway, what happened to that guy, you know, with the long hair who took her out to dinner. Did Marcellus know the guy's a dancer? Marcellus's face had darkened, his voice was sharp, and his words were: "He's dead."

Then she saw him reach for the corkscrew and she went off to fetch two wine glasses from the kitchen.

+

One day it's like something clicked inside Marcellus's head like, "Gee, if I want to continue being this mafia kingpin type of figure, I better lay off the booze some." Mia knew it would happen sooner or later. (She didn't really. If Marcellus had ended up a drunkard, Mia wouldn't have been surprised either. Marcellus takes on every endeavor, including boozing, whole-heartedly. It can be difficult to tell what's just a phase and what's for the long-term.)

The first time she tried cocaine, it didn't do anything to her. She had snorted tiny, tiny lines to ensure non-addiction. All she had felt was numbness where her friends told her to rub the remnants against her gums, none of the rush, none of the buzz. Well, now the lines were bigger and Mrs. Mia Wallace, for the most part, is quite happy in the rushed and buzzing company of _la cocaina_.

 _Drugs aren't bad_ , Mia thinks, snorting through a fifty-dollar bill. _Some drugs hit you harder, but they aren't bad. Except maybe..._

Her right nostril feels numb. She closes her left nostril, throws her head back, and breathes sharply.

She wonders sometimes what would have happened if the network had picked up `Fox Force Five'. It would have been cancelled eventually, probably, but she could have used the show as a jumping-off point. In some other life, maybe she's some movie star playing sultry leading ladies or sexy villain types, the toast of the town, the town being Hollywood. Which is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from here, really. It's funny how parallel universes rub up like that.

Fuck it. Fuck it all and do another line. Mia doesn't like to think of anything as a botched opportunity, because it's hard to tell when you beat life or life beats you. Whatever it was that fucked Marcellus over and sent him to the bottle, maybe it was a blessing. Maybe someone in this or some other universe got some shits and giggles from her husband's misfortune. That's good enough for her, as long as she doesn't think about it too much, and it has to be good enough for Marcellus, because what's done is done and there's nothing he can do about it. The only thing now is to move forward, gun in hand, crack in tow, and armed with enough alcohol to take the edge off things.

 


End file.
